expression yet contain it by an agreed political procedure."
37 Rhetoric bridges the dichotomy between public and private discourse, encouraging freedom in both and therefore in society.
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Freedom of speech was invented in ancient Athens. Isegoria , the "equal right to speak," belonged to every citizen who wished to address the Boule, Ecclesia, or jury courts. Isegoria is a term with meaning only within an open society, because freedom of elites to speak as they wish can be taken for granted. 38 Within certain limits, we even know when it was invented. Martin Ostwald places the origin of isegoria probably in the era of Cleisthenes (508507 B.C. ). 39 G. T. Griffith thinks it possible that the practice was introduced later, somewhere between 487 and 462, or even in the years immediately following, adding that it may not have been introduced by a specific act of legislation but rather by encroaching usage. 40 A. G. Woodhead generally agrees with Griffith's dating for the Ecclesia, but thinks that isegoria in the Boule has origins in the reforms of Cleisthenes. Only gradually between the time of Solon and 460 B.C. did the people grow confident enough to believe that they might address their fellow citizens. 41 J. D. Lewis places the inauguration of isegoria earlier, following the evidence of Aeschines, Lysias, and Demosthenes that it was Solon who first legislated isegoria for the assembly in his reforms of c. 594593 B.C. 42
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The Athenians never conceived of freedom of speech as an inherent right possessed by individuals. Rather, public speaking was, in the words of George Grote, "the standing engine of government." 43 Freedom of speech was of social and political rather than individual significance. It was meant not so much to encourage an individual's free expression as a city's good government. Herodotus emphasized the social significance of this freedom by saying that because Athens had isegoria , free speech enjoyed by all in a democracy, it had become first in war because each man, being free, was zealous to achieve for himself. 44 Pericles, too, insisted on the political character of freedom of speech:
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